


Brokeback Planetoid

by HungLikeARainbro



Category: Brokeback Mountain - All Media Types, Red Dwarf
Genre: F/M, Gay, Homophobia, Loving tribute, M/M, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-11-29 04:29:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11433195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HungLikeARainbro/pseuds/HungLikeARainbro
Summary: Tribute to Brokeback Mountain, not sure of how closely I'll be following the plot, but spoilers for the book/movie obviously.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started this years and years ago (i.e. when the movie came out) and sort of forgot about it. But I might actually finish it now because it's a lot of fun.
> 
> SPOILERS FOR ORIGINAL STORY TO FOLLOW
> 
> I'm not sure how closely I'll go with the original ending because I would hope in the future that type of shit doesn't happen, at least not for those reasons. But I am cynical for my species. Thoughts?
> 
> Also because the characters and backgrounds of the two main guys are mixed between R+L, neither character directly correlates in their position in the story. But as much as possible, Ennis is Rimmer and Jack is Lister, because of course they are.

They were raised in bad surroundings in opposite corners of the solar system, David Lister in Liverpool, upon the ancient Earth, Arnold Rimmer from around Jupiter, the moon Io, both high school delinquent boys with no prospects. Rimmer, belittled and tormented by his older brothers after he divorced his parents, applied at age sixteen for his engineering license that made him take an hour long trip from Io to Jupiter. He was pitched directly into manual labour aboard a mining ship called Red Dwarf.

In 2179, when he met David Lister, Rimmer was a virgin. Lister wasn’t, but that sure didn’t mean he wasn’t up for it. That spring, hungry for sex, he signed up to the Red Dwarf. Over 400 women and few decent rivals – perfect. But by a twist of fate he was assigned under Rimmer’s post and they came together on paper as foreman and camp tender for a mining operation on a planetoid. It was Rimmer’s eleventh mission with Red Dwarf, Lister’s first mission of any kind. Neither of them was pleased.

They didn’t shake hands in the Captain’s office and she didn’t seem to expect them to. Like the office, Captain Hollister was a tidy woman and she made sure they knew what was expected of them. They would take turns, each day, to watch over the robots and machines that would mine ore from deep within the planetoid. The one left behind would repair any broken machines, and cook dinner for both of them.

They left shortly after her long-winded speech on what was expected of them – her main complaint being that the last summer she had lost twenty-five percent of the robots to cave-ins.  
“Like it was my fault. I didn’t know there was supposed to be weight supports throughout the tunnels,” Rimmer sulked.  
“The name’s David,” said Lister, eager to change the subject and Rimmer’s foul mood.  
“Rimmer.”  
“Your parents were cruel weren’t they?”  
“Rimmer is my surname. My first name is Arnold.”  
Lister smiled and repeated, “Your parents were cruel weren’t they?”

They found a bar on one of the top decks and drank through the afternoon. At first glance, Lister seemed a jovial chap to Rimmer. Short and stocky with questionable hygiene and a light chuckle. He loved sports but was unkeen to take part in them, preferring to watch and drink. His clothes were worn and didn’t seem to have ever been in fashion.

Rimmer, sharp-nosed and narrow-faced, was trim and clean to the point of compulsive, and possessed a muscular and supple body made for running away from fights. His reflexes were uncommonly quick, which couldn’t be said for his mind unless he was thinking up an insult.

The robots and mining equipment were unloaded at the trailhead, and a bandy-legged officer showed Lister how to pack the AATVs – telling him, “Don’t never order curry. Them boxes a curry are real bad to pack.” Sod you, thought Lister. Three skutters piled in back. Rimmer picked out a military grey quad to ride, Lister a bright orange that turned out to have a low mpg. Rimmer and Lister, the vehicles and a hundred machines flowed up the trail like morning-after vindaloo through the u-bend and out above the craggy rocks into the great barren canyons and the coursing, endless solar wind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So is this something people might be interested in?


	2. Chapter 2

They got the portable dome up on the Space Corps. platform, the kitchen and grub boxes secured. Both slept in camp that first night, Rimmer already bitching about Hollister’s sleep with the skutters and no studying order, though he had travelled in the dark morning without even attempting to read his smuggled textbooks. Dawn came and Lister slept through until he was kicked.

During the day Lister looked across the great gulf and sometimes saw Rimmer, a small dot moving across a low gully, as a nanobot moves across a microscope slide; Rimmer, in his dark camp, saw Lister as night fire, a sign in the Red Light District.

Rimmer came lagging in late one afternoon, drank his two bottles of iced tea cooled in a wet satchel on the shady side of the dome, ate two bowls of stew, four of Lister’s poppadoms, a can of dog food (by accident – no idea how it got in the bags), read a book, watched the sun drop.

“I’m commuting for four hours a day,” he said morosely. “Come back for breakfast, go back to the robots, then evening get them powered down, come in for dinner, go _back_ to the robots, spend half the night jumping up and checking for cave-ins. I am well within my rights to demand a decent night’s sleep here. Space Corps. directives must say _something_ about this.”

“Wanna switch?” said Lister. “I wouldn’t mind watching. I wouldn’t mind sleeping out there.”

“That’s not the point. Point is, we should both be in this camp. And that spare dome smells like mechanoid fuel or worse.”

“I wouldn’t mind being out there.”

“And honestly, you have to get up a dozen times in the night over those cave-ins. I’m happy to switch but I’ll warn you I’m no Anatole in the kitchen.” He smirked. “Rather good at making Pot Noodles.”

Lister shuddered. “No thanks, and can’t be worse than me. I don’t mind swapping.”

They fended off the night for an hour with the energy-saving lamp, and around ten (Ship Time) Lister rode the grey AATV through the glimmering malachite back to the tunnels, carrying left over poppadoms, a jar of lime pickle, and a can of beer with him for the next day, saying he’d save a trip, stay out until supper.

“Saved a skutter this morning,” he told Rimmer the next evening, surprising him with sudden cleanliness by sloshing his face with hot water, lathering up soap and shaving. “Poor thing went track over claw. You need any of this hot water? There’s loads.”

“Perfectly fine, thank you,” he answered in a clipped tone.

“Well I’m going to wash everything I can reach,” he said, surprising Rimmer even further, pulling off his leathers and t-shirt (no underwear of any kind, Rimmer noticed, too incensed by the lack of consideration or shame to react to the behaviour), slopping the green washcloth around with no decorum as there was no-one to see.

They had a high time supper by the synthetic fire, a can of beans each, hash browns, and a secret quart of whiskey Lister kindly shared, sat with their backs against rolled up sleeping bags, shooting the breeze about subjects that only one of them was ever interested in, finding virtually nothing in common; Rimmer’s plethora of brothers and Lister’s barely existing family, rastabilly skank versus organ music, cards over board games. Rimmer said the kind of games that interested him lasted longer than a few drinks and had some point to them. Money’s a good point, said Lister, and Rimmer had to agree. Normally Rimmer wouldn’t be respectful of another’s opinions, nor they of his, so he was surprised by Lister’s geniality towards him. When he watched him leave, backlit by the firelight, he thought he’d never had such a good time, felt like he could paw the white out of the moon.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've decided how I'm going to end this later. Dun dun DUUUUUNNNNN

The summer went on and they moved the machines to a new cave system; the distance between the drills and the new camp was greater and the night drive longer. Lister rode easily, sleeping with his eyes open, but the hours he was away from the robots stretched out and out. Lister pulled a squalling riff out of his guitar, dented a little from a fall off the orange AATV, and Rimmer had the voice of a eunuch; a few nights they mangled their way through Eurovison, the only songs both knew.

“Too late to go out to those smegging skutters," said Lister, dizzy drunk on all fours one cold hour when the moon had notched past two, the partnered sun still hovering nearby. “We’ve got extra blankets. I’ll curl up out in the dome and grab forty winks, drive out in the morning.”

“You’ll bloody freeze when the sun goes down.” Rimmer paused. “You’re better off in the tent.”

“I’m a Northerner,” he boasted, but he soon woke Rimmer with the clacking of his jaw.

“Get in here you gimboid. The sleeping bag is big enough,” said Rimmer in an irritable sleep-clogged voice. It was big enough, warm enough, and in a little while they deepened their intimacy considerably. Lister ran full throttle on all roads, but Rimmer wanted none of it when he seized his left hand and brought it to his erect cock. Rimmer jerked his hand away as though he’d touched Gazpacho soup again, got to his knees, shoved his ship-issued pyjama bottoms down, hauled Lister onto all fours, and, with the help of the clear slick and a little spit, entered him, nothing he’d done before (with anyone, he lamented) but no instruction manual needed. They went at it in silence except for a few sharp intakes of breath and Rimmer’s choked, “Geronimo,” then out, down, and asleep.

Rimmer woke with his bottoms around his knees, a GELF-sized headache, and Lister butted against him; without saying anything about it, both knew how it would go for the rest of the mission, skutters be smegged.

As it did go. They never talked about shagging, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight of the distant sun, and at evening in the fire glow, quick (Rimmer lamented again), rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a smegging word except once Rimmer said, “I’m not a poof,” and Lister jumped in with, “Me either. Just a one-off. No-one’s business but ours.” There were only the two of them on the planet, flying in the euphoric bitter atmosphere. They believed themselves invisible, not knowing Captain Hollister had watched them through security cameras for ten minutes one day, waiting until they’d buttoned up their jumpsuits, waiting until Lister rode back to the caves, before turning up on the video-phone with the message that the Rimmers had sent word that Uncle Frank was in the hospital with pnuemonia and expected not to make it. Though he did, and she came back on to say so, fixing Rimmer with her bold stare, not bothering to end with, “Over and Out.”


	4. Chapter 4

In August Lister spent the whole night with Rimmer in the main camp, and in a firey solarstorm the skutters were thrown about, took off and landed in a canyon. There was a smegging miserable time for five days, Lister abseiling down trying to recover the parts, the task almost impossible under 3x Earth’s gravity. He tried to match limbs to bodies. Even when the number of appendages were right Lister knew the parts were mixed. In a disquieting way everything seemed mixed.

The next week Captain Hollister sent shuttles to bring them back, another, bigger solarstorm was predicted, and they packed the machines and moved off the planetoid with the skutters, stones rolling at their caterpillar tracks, purple cloud crowding in from the west and the sulphuric smell of acid rain pressing them on. As they descended the steps to the cockpit Rimmer felt he was in a slow motion, but headlong, irreversible fall.

Captain Hollister topped up their credits, said little. She had looked at the mangled skutters with a sour expression. Technicians never did much of a job.

“You’ll be doing this again next summer?” said Rimmer to Lister in the corridor, there was a cigarette already balanced on the Scouser’s lip.

“Not likely. Trying to get to Fiji at some point. You?” He looked away from Rimmer’s jaw, bruised blue from the hard punch Lister had thrown him on the last day.

“Very likely. Got to keep grafting for that officer recommendation in the spring. If the Canaries don’t get me.”

“Well, if you’re ever on A-shift…” He let the question hang in the air.

“Perhaps,” said Rimmer, and they gingerly shook hands; then there was forty feet of distance between them and nothing to do but take elevators in opposite directions. Within a mile Rimmer felt like someone was punching his gut with his old bedtime boxing gloves. He got out at the next floor and, amongst confused engineers working on the Starbug, tried to puke but nothing came up. He felt worse than he had ever felt, even during all his exams, and it took a long time for the feeling to wear off.

In December Rimmer went on a date with Yvonne McGruder and had her pregnant within twelve minutes, including the time it took to eat the pizza. He never got beyond his position as Second Technician and was still working Z-shift by the time Michael McGruder was born, the relationship between the parents remaining professional though not from lack of trying (i.e. pathetic begging) on Rimmer’s part.

The next summer came on and in June Rimmer had a message from crew member RD 52 169 LISTER, D; the first sign of life in all that time.

Mate I got in trouble with a cat and they moved me to Z-shift! What are the odds?? Gonna be at Parrots tonite if you want to hang.

Rimmer wrote back, “How serendipitious. I’ll meet you at six.” 

Wearing his best uniform with all his long service medals, Rimmer turned up an hour early to drown his nerves in drink. At half-past the agreed hour, Lister hadn’t turned up and Rimmer was back out in the empty hall preparing to go to his room and spend the rest of the night sending vicous messages when he saw him strolling down towards him. A hot jolt scalded Rimmer and his bitterness forgotten he was at Lister’s end in seconds. Lister seized him into a mighty hug that he apprehensively returned, squeezing the breath out of each other, saying smegging hell, smegging hell; then, as easily as a 14B fits into a chicken soup nozzle, their mouths came together, and hard, Lister’s fur cap falling to the floor, wet saliva welling, and Parrot’s entrance opening and Kristine Kochanski looking out for a few seconds at her date’s straining shoulders and shutting the door again and still they clung, pressing chest and groin and thigh and leg together, treading on each other’s biker boots and shiny shoes until they pulled apart to breathe and Rimmer, not big on endearments, said one of the few Esperanto words he had learned and that had stuck, “Karulo.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm glad there's some interest in this. Sorry it took so long to update - working and moving house is a bugger and not in the sexy way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have this horrible feeling I made a huge mistake somewhere here???

The door opened again a few inches and Kris stood in the strobed light.

What could Lister say? “Kris, you know Rimmer, yeah? Rimmer this is my… well, we’re dating. Keeping it casual.” His chest was heaving. He could smell Rimmer – the intensely familiar odour of highlighter pens, JMC cologne, and a faint sweetness like lassi, and with it the stagnant cold of the planetoid. “Kris,” he said, “Can you believe we were wandering around just a few miles from each other every day and we’ve not met up for almost two years? Mad, eh?” He was glad the pale disco lighting was covering his trembling arms in the dark corridor.

“A shame,” said Kris in a low voice. She had seen what she had seen. Behind her in the bar, a drunken roar from Lister’s mates rose above the forgettable music.

“Seems a bit crowded in there. We should go somewhere quieter to catch up,” said Rimmer. His shaking hand grazed Lister’s hand, electrical current snapped between them.

“Good idea,” Lister said. “You don’t mind if we rain check, right?” Kris’s mouth twitched.

“It’s just I’ve got Michael tomorrow,” Rimmer lied. “Yvonne would have my privates for a necklace if I had him whilst hung over.” The Red Dwarf grapevine must have done its work because Lister didn’t seem surprised by either name working into the conversation.

“Kris,” he said. “We’ll probably be out late, even if we’re not drinking. You’ll be alright with the lads’ girlfriends, yeah?”

“Adiaŭ fraŭlino,” said Rimmer trying to excuse himself sooner, leg trembling like the unsupported tunnel beams from those years ago.

“Dave-” said Kris in her misery voice, but that didn’t slow him down the hall and he called back, “Tell Petersen he still owes me a pint from yesterday!”

They went to an off-licence, ordered a bottle of whiskey, and within twenty minutes were in Rimmer’s room jouncing his bunk. A few handfuls of space debris rattled against the porthole, followed by a garbage pod with flecked paint where letters were once stamped.

The room stank of semen and smoke and sweat and whiskey, to Rimmer’s dismay. He lay spread eagled, spent and wet, breathing deep, still half tumescent; Lister blew forceful cigarette clouds like whale spouts, and said, “Smeg considering what a tight arse you always are you don’t half make room when you want.” Rimmer gave him a shrewd glare that he ignored and continued on, “We’ve got to talk about this. I wanted to talk to you again for months but I swear I didn’t think we’d just fall into bed like this… smeg, of course I did. Why I sent that bloody message. I pretty much ran to Parrot’s. Couldn’t get there fast enough.”

“Considering you were late,” sniffed Rimmer. “Two years. I’d given up on you. Like you said, it’s ridiculous; on a ship three miles long.”

“Well, I didn’t know if you were still miffed about me socking you. Then I thought you’d become a family guy. Then there was the cat stuff.”

“Yvonne is… very wisely keeping me at a distance. To be honest I find her terrifying. Now explain the cat.”

“Better you don’t know. Don’t want you ending up in stasis.”

“Well while you weren’t looking I got my twelve years long service,” Rimmer chimed proudly.

On the back of a small metal chair he saw the shine of the medals.

“Getting closer then?”

“Not really. Officerdom is getting to be a pipe dream. And Kochanski?”

Lister offered him a hit of his cigarette but he declined. “Rebound. Me, I mean. She’s still pining for some chef or something. I was a friendly smile and a warm body, I know that.”

“And me?”

“You’re something else,” Lister smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't imagine Lister outright cheating on Kris, but she obviously didn't know they were having an open dating relationship so that's our conflict there.
> 
> Next chapter gets a little dark. But this isn't a happy prancy story anyway, you all knew that coming in right? I'm not going to break hearts am I?


	6. Chapter 6

Rimmer had been sitting up in his room most nights those two years, alone, wondering if he was a… He knew he wasn’t. He had a child after all, with Yvonne, had enjoyed those twelve minutes immensely. But nothing was like Lister and he’d implied that he felt the same way about him. Rimmer looked up at him still puffing away in his bunk. “I’d never even thought about other men before you, and I have to admit I’ve thought about that _a lot_. Have you been with others besides me, Listy?”

“Course not,” said Lister, guilty of shuttling down to Mimas a few times over their months apart. “You know that. That planetoid got us good and it’s not over by a long shot. We’ve got to work out what we are now.”

Rimmer wasn’t about to admit that he’d missed Lister so much he’d almost been sick. That it took a year and a squalling baby to make him realise that the Love Celibates wasn’t the place for him; that feelings were painful and wonderful and he should never have ignored them. But it was too late then by a long, long while. Too late since the beginning.

“Mate,” said Lister. “We’ve got a smegging situation here. I know what I want. What do _you_ want to do?”

“There’s nothing _to_ do,” said Rimmer. “Hollister saw us. And it’s reflected badly on me.” He neglected to add that she had leaned back in her squeaky leather chair last summer and said, “Rimmer, you two weren’t getting credits to leave the skutters to fend for themselves whilst you stemmed the rose,” and declined his request to retake his exam after suffering a panic attack and writing, “I am a fish,” all over his paper. There was no question that a man in Rimmer’s position could brown-tongue his way throught the ranks. And there were plenty of Dorothy’s friends amongst officers. But there was a reason people came out _after_ they got their pips. Doors were bolted, locked, and cartoon planks of wood were hammered against them if there was a sniff of the rainbow suggested beforehand. “I want to be an officer, Lister. As soon as I am, we can be whatever we want.” It would be safe to be whatever they want, in the depths of space far from Io.

“What if there was an alternative? I’ve got a plan, y’see. I’m going to get a little place on Fiji – Earth. Gonna get a sheep and a cow and breed horses.”

“With a sheep and a cow?”

“With horses and horses,” Lister clicked his tongue.

“No, absolutely not. Two men living alone like that. It’s obvious then.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t want to be obvious. Or… worse.” Rimmer hunched, the nodules of his spine visible even in the dim lamplit room, voice faint and tremulous. “There were two old guys in a house a few domes down from us on Io. Ex-Corps. Retired together. My father would make remarks about them to me and my brothers. I was probably about nine when one of them turned up dead in a crater near my house.”

Soft fingers on his arm. “You saw it?”

“Father made sure of it. Took all four of us to see the body retrieved. Not much in the way of law on a Middle-class moon so no-one stopped us. For all I know he was involved. Probably. If he hadn’t had those strokes and he was here now… let’s just say I’d probably be praying for the rack of my youth.”

“So I have to wait for you to be an officer and a gentleman?”

“We can meet up once in a while. In secret.”

“How much is once in a while?” said Lister. “Once in a while every two smegging years?”

“No,” said Rimmer, forbearing to ask whose fault that was. “Don’t forget you’re on Z-shift now. It’ll be easier to coincidentally be on the same hours, in the same place.”

“Well, I need a little more than that right now. Call Todhunter and pull a sickie and we’ll shack up for a couple of days. I’ll be nursemaid. Get the outfit and everything.” Lister winked charmingly.

Rimmer nodded falling like always, the reminiscence of dark memories fading under gentle lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is horribly relatable with He Who Must Not Be President stamping around the military these days. I didn't mean for that. 
> 
> Ugh :(


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's maybe four chapters left? Thanks for sticking with me!

A slow corrosion worked between Lister and Kris, no real trouble, just widening water. He never offered explanations about his sudden friendship with Rimmer, never used that term, never used any term. Her resentment opened out a little every week: the embrace she had glimpsed. How he would wander off at the drop of his hat to see him, time with her planned or not, even if the day had been spent working side by side. His disinclination to step out and have any fun – completely different to the man she met and dulling her affections like rock to a knife – his propensity to roll to the wall and sleep as soon as he hit the bed, and when they crawled towards their first year of not really dating she said, What am I doing, hanging around with him, dumped Lister, and married the Floor Six sous chef a week later.

Four months in and she was five months pregnant. Even Lister could do the maths on that.

She spoke to Rimmer only once on his fortnightly exam-beg curious about their newfound friendliness, tired of jealousy. He straightened at her queries, feeling too big for the room. “I don’t know what you mean, ma’am.”

“Don’t lie, don’t try to fool me, Rimmer. I just wish I’d known where I stood.”

 _Officer_ Kochanski, one of them and Brass talked. He panicked. “Mind your own business.” Remembered his place. “Ma’am.”

On his side Lister had a vague sense of getting short-changed, unable to touch Rimmer except in his room and hardly ever invited in the first place. When they were at work they worked, Rimmer spider-scrawling in his notebook and snapping at every wrong thing. Fine by him, profession and life could stay separate if it suited. But Rimmer’s nerves remained razor sharp in downtime bodies always apart even in an empty elevator, stern eyes and thin lips etched until the moment his doors closed, never Lister’s doors, only then affectionate gazes and searching hands.

Hollister retired and seemed not to have swapped slander with her replacement ‘Bongo’ Tranter, the bored ex-Admiral looking to get back into the fray with the ground troops. He took a liking to Rimmer, moved himself in when he saw him living alone, and Lister found himself and Rimmer spending more and more time apart – stolen liaisons brief already due to Rimmer’s new bunkmate being a homebody. James, as Rimmer called him in a way that made Lister spit blood, even granted a special exam for him, wrote recommendations with a slimy psiren smile. 

No Hollister meant no block to their old work as miners so Lister booked them on the first possible excavation and it was much like that first summer warm together and drunk and lazy for every moment, Tranter hopefully forgotten. Years on years they worked their way through the planetoids, but never returning to that one.

In May of 2191 they spent a few cold days at a series of little icebound, no name asteroids, then worked across onto a larger planetoid. Shuttling down, things were fine, they set up camp without saying much. Lister broke out his canister of whiskey, took a long, hot swallow, exhaled forcefully, said, “That’s one of two things I need right now,” capped it and tossed it to Rimmer. They passed a cigarette back and forth, the heater burning, Rimmer restless and bitching about the cold, poking the machine, twisting the dial up until it threatened to break.

Eager to keep up appearances, Rimmer had attempted a few romantic trysts to no avail. Lister used up his credits on Mimas when he felt especially down about certain Admirals and their highly irregular living arrangements with the rank and file. Rimmer’s bitching about being two men alone in a shack on an island, saw no irony no suspicion in his superior slumming it with a crewmember.

The skutters squeaked in the darkness beyond their lamp’s circle of light. Lister put his arm around Rimmer, pulled him close, said Kris had finally admitted her boys were his. Rimmer slid his cold hand between Lister’s legs, said he hadn’t seen his own lad for months, Yvonne having retired with an engineer years back and bundled them all into a cottage on Io.

“I always wanted kids,” said Lister, undoing buttons, “now I do, I don’t see ‘em.”

“I never wanted any children,” said Rimmer. “But smeg all has worked the way I wanted.” They rolled down under the covers. One thing never changed: the brilliant charge of their infrequent couplings was darkened by the sense of time flying, never enough time, never enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tranter has been known as 'Bungo' Peter and 'Bongo' James, the first being in Backwards (book) and the latter from Dimension Jump (TV) where Pete Tranter was borrowed later as the brother of a crush Lister once had. To make it plainly clear it is not the guy Lister was friends with I chose the DJ name, although this story is more inspired by the books than the show. Also my nickname is Jim, so there's that.
> 
> Blame the writers for not spending a few quid on a Baby-name and/or Surname ancestry book and being a bit more adventurous.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry it's been a while. I'm moving to Kent! This will be finished soon. I must admit, these next few chapters have been hard to write.

A day or two later in the landing bay, machines loaded into their docks, Lister was ready to head back to his room, Rimmer had leave to go see his family. Rimmer leaned against the bay doors, said what he’d been putting off the whole week, that likely he couldn’t get away again until November.

“November. What the smeg happened to August? We said ten days in August. Smeg, Rimmer! Why didn’t you say nothing? You had a whole smegging week to pipe up. Why’re we always doing this on planetoids anyway? Why can’t we take a break away, together. Go to Mimas or something.”

“Mimas? Lister, you know me. If there’s not a golf course and a five-star I’m not going within ten klicks of it. And I can’t go in August, I promised James I’d take over in Y-shift.” 

“You know what, mate, this is a smegging unsatisfactory situation. You used to come away easily. Now it’s like trying to see the smegging Pope We’re hardly ever on the same shifts anymore.” Since Tranter started making up the schedules, he omitted.

“Lister, I have a job to do. I don’t enjoy shirking my duties at every opportunity unlike you. I can’t take you away on this leave because my family got all excited that I was friends with an admiral. And he’s interested in my military heritage. It’s things like that that’ll help my promotion.”

“Sure, _that’s_ what’s helping your promotion.” The tone was bitter and accusatory.

Rimmer said nothing, straightened up slowly, rubbed at his forehead. He walked to the Starbug, put his hand on the leg, said something that only the skutters could hear, turned and walked back at a deliberate pace.

“You’ve been visiting Mimas a lot, havent you Lister?” Mimas was the place. He’d heard. Planned to go himself back in his youth but always paled out.

“Yeah I have. There a problem?” Braced for it all these years and here it came, late and unexpected. “We could have had a good life together on Fiji, a smegging good life. You wouldn’t do it, Rimmer, so what we’ve got now is these stupid planetoids. Everything is built on this. It’s all we’ve got mate, fucking all. Count the smegging few times we’ve been together all these years. Measure the short smegging leash you keep me on, then ask me about Mimas and then tell me you judge me for needing something I hardly ever get. You’ve no idea how bad it gets. I’m not you. I can't last with a few low atmosphere fucks and five minute fumbles in your bunk. You’re too much for me, Rimmer. I wish I knew how to quit you.”

Like vast clouds of sulpuric gas from thermal vents in the cracks of the planetoids the years of things unsaid and now unsayable – admissions, declarations, shames, guilts, fears – rose around them. Rimmer stood as if shot by a bazookoid, face grey and deep lined, grimacing, eyes screwed shut, fist in mouth, leg jiggling, hit the ground on his knees.

“Smeg,” said Lister. “Rimmer?” But before he could reach out, trying to guess if it was his heart condition or the overflow of uncommon rage, Rimmer was back on his feet, and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened to jimmy open a locked car on his old estate and then bent back and hidden back in his foster family’s closet, Lister found that somehow they had torqued things to almost where they had been, for what they’d said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing begun, nothing resolved.


	9. Chapter 9

What Lister remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on the first planetoid when Rimmer had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fan heater, the shadow of their bodies a single telegraph pole against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the ship-issued watch in Rimmer’s pocket. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fan’s rotations. Rimmer’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed a miliatry tune, rocked a little in the starlight, and Lister leaned against the stacatto heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into a sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced until Rimmer, dredging up a rusty but still usable quote from a book he read as a child, said, “Day is over, night has come. Today is gone, what’s done is done. Embrace your dreams, through the night, tomorrow comes with a whole new light,” and gave Lister a shake, a push, and dozily he went off into the darkness, mumbling, “See you tomorrow,” as he mounted the AATV.

Later, that dozy embrace solidified in his memory as the single moment of artless, charmed happiness in their separate and difficult relationship. Nothing marred it, even the knowledge that Rimmer would not then embrace him face to face because he did not want to see or feel that it was Lister than he held. And maybe, he thought, they’d never got much farther than that. Let be, let be.

Lister didn’t know about the accident for days until a message he sent to Rimmer asking when he’d be back from leave came back as “unsent” and the account deactivated. He called up his room, got no video only audio and it was Tranter’s voice that came through. In a level voice he explained that whilst they were visiting Rimmer’s family his brothers took him out on an outing and lost him. He turned up in a crater nearby, possible vehicle accident, they were awaiting an autopsy.

Lister suspected that whatever the results, money would exchange hands and “accident” would be recorded.

“It was a terrible thing. I was trying to find the right way to tell the crew. You two… were quite close weren’t you?” No doubt about it, he was polite but the deep voice was as cold as snow. “Just a shame McIntyre outranks him or of course I’d _love_ to bring him back as a hologram. Still, you’ll be glad to know he’ll be getting the Space Corps. treatment. All the bells and whistles. Jettisoned off into the space he loved. He wanted to be interred on an old planetoid, but regs and all that…”

“I know the one,” said Lister. He could hardly talk. He wanted to curse Tranter for not speaking up, defending Rimmer’s honour. “Any chance I could go through his stuff? I mean… for a…”

“Keepsake? I don’t see why not. He has a lot of trinkets. His family wouldn’t miss anything.” 

Or him, was very much implied.

Tumbling around in his bed that night he could see the crater; Rimmer perched on the edge, three men that looked nothing like him in advance. Maybe he really did roll off a quad, maybe they didn’t catch him in an uncompromising position, or saw the way Tranter’s eyes seared into him. 

They wouldn’t attack a superior, they weren’t stupid.


	10. Chapter 10

Lister chose a day when Tranter was out keen to avoid altercations, got permission to enter from the ship’s computer Holly. He was sure he’d sock Tranter if that face was near enough. But it was a bad idea being there with the admiral’s possessions spilling all over infecting the Rimmer-ness out of the room.

He sat on the narrow bunk, a polychromatic studying schedule and newspaper clippings promoting other Arnolds stuck with a spirit level neatness on the wall. An ancient magazine photograph of a Hammond organ was being used as a bookmark in a copy of “How to Pick Up Girls By Hypnosis.” He’d not really looked around before, always there for a purpose, left as soon as it was over. Morning wood and halitosis kisses were for planetoids only.

The closet was a shallow cavity with a metal rod braced across. Inside even his underpants were on hangers. At the right side beyond his starched shirts was his jumpsuit from their first excursion. He lifted it from the velvet hanger. The dried blood on the sleeve was Rimmer’s blood, a gushing nosebleed on the last afternoon on the planetoid when Lister, in their contortionist grappling and tussling, had slammed Rimmer’s nose hard with his knee. The top part of the jumpsuit seemed heavy until he saw the Hawaiian shirt he thought he lost tucked inside, the pair like two skins, one inside the other, two in one. He pressed his face into the fabric and breathed in slowly through his mouth and nose, hoping for the faintest soap and iron rock and salty sweet smell of Rimmer, but there was no real scent, only the memory of it, the imagined power of the planetoid of which nothing was left but what he held in his hands.

A few days later, on the Saturday, he shuttled down to Mimas not looking for any company this time but not wanting to be on the ship when he felt the subtle shudder of the funeral canister propelling out into the vast grieving black. He picked up a new cat not thinking to check her sex and though he was out of his prime Adam and Frankenstein became fast friends, too fast, apple not falling far from the tree.

Around that time Rimmer began to appear in his dreams, in an odd silver spacesuit, curly headed and smug smile, talking about telegraph poles and ancient Macedonia. And he would wake sometimes in grief, sometimes with the old sense of joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, sometimes the sheets.

Tranter was on the cat case with a venom Hollister hadn’t shown and Lister gladly accepted stasis for punishment; anything to switch off his memories, stepping through the door wearing the oversized old stained jumpsuit looking down at the copper brown stain through a few stinging tears.

“Arnie I swear-” he said, though Rimmer had never asked him to swear anything and was himself not the swearing kind. 

There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can’t fix it then you’ve got to stand it and stand it he did for a good three million years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 99% Ms. Proulx's words and 1% inserted and reflavoured garbage by me. Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
